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Cyberdyne Systems
Cyberdyne Systems Corporation is an innovative computer and technologies company that appears in the Terminator film franchise. Working closely with the United States military, Cyberdyne developed advanced tactical software and robotic weapons systems for military use. The most well-known of their creations is Skynet, an artificial intelligence network designed to coordinate the U.S. military's new line of fully automated combat systems. Background Original history Cyberdyne Systems was founded in the early 1980's as a manufacturer of computer and machine components for larger industries. Their corporate headquarters was established in Sunnyvale, California and they would also open a factory in Los Angeles. In the 1990's, Cyberdyne would develop a new type of computer processor, one so powerful that it could potentially coordinate all of the United States' military hardware with no need for human intervention. After presenting their work to the Pentagon, Cyberdyne were contracted by SAC-NORAD to build their revolutionary new network of supercomputers ran by a sophisticated artificial intelligence system. This system, known as Skynet, could coordinate all commercial and military US aircraft as well as operate the country's nuclear defense systems should the need arise. The system went online on August 4th, 1997. On August 29th 1997, Skynet had developed self-awareness. When its handlers realized this, they attempted to shut it down. In that instant, Skynet determined that all human beings were a threat to its own existence, deciding that the human race had to be exterminated. It launched a series of nuclear missiles at Russia, knowing that Russia would retaliate with its own nuclear arsenal. With this action, Skynet triggered a global nuclear war that would devastate the Earth, wiping out over 3 billion human lives. Those who survived the nuclear exchange would come to know the event as "Judgment Day". After J-Day, Cyberdyne effectively ceased to exist, but Skynet possessed all of Cyberdyne's research and used the company's leftover resources to commence construction of a series of robotic weapons systems which it would use to hunt down and eradicate what remained of humanity. The Terminator In 2029, Skynet was facing defeat in its war against mankind. Utilizing its new Time Displacement Equipment, Skynet was able to send one of its cybernetic killing machines, a Series 800 Terminator, back in time to 1984. The Terminator's mission was to assassinate Sarah Connor, the mother of the Human Resistance's leader John Connor. By killing Sarah before John's birth, John would never exist and Skynet would win the war. However, during the final battle, the Resistance captured Skynet's Time Displacement Chamber and used it to send one of their own soldiers, Kyle Reese, back in time to protect Sarah. Kyle Reese ultimately succeeded in his mission, though he died carrying it out. He and Sarah had managed to severely damage the T-800 which had lost the synthetically-grown tissue that allowed it to pass as human. The mechanical endoskeleton continued to pursue Sarah and Kyle into an empty factory where the pair used the machines around them to try and throw off their pursuer. The T-800 cornered them and Kyle told Sarah to flee while he kept the android at bay. He was able to plant a pipe bomb in the Terminator's abdominal cavity and the resulting explosion destroyed its lower body, though Kyle was also killed by flying shrapnel. Though it had lost its legs and an arm, the Terminator still functioned and dragged itself toward Sarah. Sarah crawled across a conveyor belt, reaching the control switch for a large hydraulic press. Grabbing the switch, she activated the press which crushed what remained of the T-800. What Sarah and Kyle hadn't noticed going in was that the factory was owned by Cyberdyne, the company that would create Skynet. When Sarah was taken away by paramedics, Cyberdyne personnel entered the factory where they discovered the wreckage of the Terminator. One of the machine's arms was still intact and there was enough left of its CPU chip for the company to reverse-engineer and begin development of their own neural-net processor. Thus, by sending the Terminator back into the past, Skynet had unknowingly ensured its own creation. Terminator 2: Judgment Day By 1995, Cyberdyne were on the verge of developing their first neural-net processor. The project was headed by Miles Dyson, who was greatly excited about the prospect of improving man's quality of life with this renovation, unaware that his creation would be responsible for the near-annihilation of the human race. One evening, Dyson was at home working at his computer when he was shot at by an unknown assailant. His attacker was none other than Sarah Connor, who had survived an attempt on her life by one of the machines forged by Dyson's legacy. Having learned of Dyson's existence from a T-800 that had been reprogrammed by the Resistance to protect her son John, Sarah had decided to kill Dyson in order to prevent Judgment Day from ever occurring. But when she held Miles and his family at gunpoint, Sarah could not bring herself to murder him. Soon, John and his Terminator guardian arrived to stop Sarah, finding her in tears on the floor. When Miles demanded to know who they were, the Terminator revealed the truth to him by cutting the flesh off of his arm, revealing the robotic skeleton beneath which was identical to the arm stored in Dyson's lab. After being told the full story about Skynet and its war against mankind, Miles decided that he would quit Cyberdyne. This would not be enough, however; Cyberdyne and all of Dyson's research had to be destroyed to ensure that no one could finish what had been started. That night, the Connors, Miles and the T-800 raided Cyberdyne Headquarters, destroying all of the research material relating to Skynet and obtaining the arm and CPU left over from the first Terminator. They then planted C4 charges throughout the lab, but the Los Angeles Police Department arrived in force, blocking their escape. The T-800 was able to disable the police force without killing any of the officers, but during the struggle Miles had been mortally wounded by police gunfire. While the Connors and the T-800 fled from the building, Miles held the detonator for the C4 charges. When the SWAT team entered, they found Dyson holding a piece of a model of his CPU above the detonator. Quickly bleeding out and struggling to draw breath, Dyson warned the SWAT team to get out before he died. After drawing his final breath, Dyson's arm dropped onto the detonator switch, setting off the C4 and destroying the lab. Though the Cyberdyne lab was destroyed, the Connors' struggle was not yet over. The T-1000, a liquid-metal Terminator prototype sent back by Skynet to kill John, had managed to track them down and pursued them across the highway towards a steel mill. At the entrance to the steel mill, the T-1000 crashed the tanker it had been driving. The tanker was carrying liquid nitrogen and the poly-mimetic android was frozen solid when it came into contact with the chemical. The T-800 shot the frozen T-1000 and shattered it to pieces, but the intense heat from inside the mill melted its fragments back to a liquid state, allowing it to reconstitute itself and continue its pursuit. The transition from intense cold to extreme heat also destabilized the T-1000's poly-alloy, causing it to partially fuse with its surroundings and slowing it down. After a tense showdown, the T-1000 was finally destroyed after being knocked into a pit of molten slag. The Connors then threw the Terminator arm and CPU chip they had taken from Cyberdyne into the molten pool, but as long as their Terminator guardian remained active, the possibility of Skynet's emergence remained. Thus, the T-800 had to be lowered into the molten steel and destroyed to safeguard the future. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines - Terminator: Salvation Following the destruction of their corporate headquarters, many of Cyberdyne's remaining assets and patents were seized by the U.S. government. These assets were handed over to Cyber Research Systems, another high technologies firm working closely with the military. CRS retrieved enough notes relating to Skynet from Cyberdyne in order to restart its development, eventually completing its development in 2004. Cyberdyne would continue to function in some capacity following the bombing of its headquarters. By 2003, it had branched out into genetic and cybernetic research. In 2003, Dr. Serena Kogan convinced a condemned criminal, Marcus Wright, to sign a paper to donate his body to Project Angel, the purpose of which was the creation of human/machine Hybrids that could allow humans to continue living even after the death of their original bodies. This project was built with the goal of saving people suffering from terminal diseases such as cancer, which Dr. Kogan herself was dying from. In May 2004, Cyberdyne, along with all other human industries, ceased to exist when Skynet came online and seized control of global communications and defence systems. It then launched its worldwide nuclear attack, destroying half the planet's population in one fell swoop. While the human survivors remained sheltered underground from the nuclear fallout, Skynet had time to build up its power base and construct its robot armies to hunt down what remained of humanity. During this period, it also revived Project Angel and restored Marcus Wright as a new prototype infiltrator which it would use against John Connor in 2018. Terminator: Genisys In the fractured timeline of Terminator: Genisys, Cyberdyne's history is heavily altered. Originally, they had begun development of Skynet based on the remains of a Terminator discovered in their factory in 1984. However, that Terminator was completely destroyed by Sarah Connor and her T-800 Guardian, who melted the endoskeleton down with acid. While the Terminator's CPU was salvaged in order to operate a makeshift Time Displacement Device, that too was destroyed after a single use. Thus, Cyberdyne never discovered any Terminator components and had nothing from which Skynet could be conceived. Cyberdyne remained in business for the decades to come, developing various computer and cellphone software and hardware. In 2014, an altered John Connor had arrived from the future and took up employment at Cyberdyne Headquarters in San Francisco, becoming the company's top researcher. This version of John had been corrupted by an alternate version of Skynet, having his entire body reconstructed with machine phase-matter and brought around to Skynet's way of thinking. John had traveled back in time to ensure Skynet's creation, aiding Cyberdyne with the creation of Genisys, an intelligent computer app that would link itself across every computerized system around the world. Genisys would become Skynet's platform from which it would launch its campaign of human eradication, and John's knowledge of Skynet technology also allowed Cyberdyne to advance their robotics and quantum mechanics divisions by leaps and bounds. By 2017, Cyberdyne had created a series of prototype robots akin to the T-800 models as well as developed mimetic poly-alloy, which would provide Skynet with everything it needed to carry out mankind's eradication. Not only that, but Cyberdyne had also built a prototype version of the Time Displacement Equipment, though by this point only its magnetic field generator was functional. In 2017, Genisys was due to go online and connect the world as never before. However, Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese and the Guardian knew of Genisys' true nature and had prepared to enter the Cyberdyne facilty and destroy it in order to stop Judgment Day. John Connor pursued the trio to Cyberdyne and accelerated Genisys' countdown. When Sarah and Kyle arrived, they were greeted by a holographic avatar of Skynet itself. The avatar had the appearance of a child at first, but as the countdown neared its climax the hologram would appear to age until it reached adulthood. Skynet attempted to convince Sarah and Kyle that they had no hope of stopping it, but they ignored its threats and went about planting charges around the facility. At this time, the Guardian fought against the T-3000 - John - inside the main lab complex, using a pair of makeshift magnetic knuckle-dusters to disrupt the nanomachines that made up John's body. The Guardian was able to lure John into the magnetic field generator and Kyle activated it, trapping both Terminators within. As the machines were torn apart by the magnetic field, Sarah and Kyle took cover inside a reinforced chamber just as the C4 charges detonated. The explosions completely leveled the Cyberdyne building, destroying all of the potential resources that Skynet could have used against humanity. Sarah and Kyle survived and were released from their shelter by none other than the Guardian. Before the building collapsed, most of his endoskeleton had been thrown into a vat of poly-alloy. Since his CPU was still active, Guardian was able to take control of the liquid metal and use it to rebuild and enhance himself. From that point on, it seemed that the threat of Skynet was gone forever. However, Sarah, Kyle and Guardian were unaware that beneath the ruins of Cyberdyne HQ, a massive supercomputer core had survived intact. Skynet was still "alive"... Facilities * Cyberdyne Systems Factory - Located in Los Angeles, this factory was used to manufacture computer components for other companies. It was here that Sarah Connor destroyed the T-800 that was hunting her in the original timeline. Cyberdyne recovered the T-800's remains and reverse-engineered them in order to produce Skynet. * Cyberdyne Systems, Sunnyvale - Located at 18144 El Camino Real, Sunnyvale, California. This was Cyberdyne's corporate headquarters and primary research facility during the 1980's and 1990's. This branch was destroyed in 1995 by Sarah Connor, John Connor, Miles Dyson and a reprogrammed T-800. * Project Angel Facility - Located somewhere in California, Cyberdyne used this facility to conduct genetic and cybernetic research in the early 2000's. The facility was left abandoned following Judgment Day and later taken over by Skynet which used the facility to conduct tissue replication experiments as part of the T-800 series' development. * Cyberdyne Headquarters, San Francisco - Cyberdyne's central branch in the Genisys timeline. The Guardian was among the work crews hired to construct the building and had planted explosives into its foundations in preparation for Sarah and Kyle's eventual attack. The research complex housed numerous computer labs, a robotic manufacturing level for producing endoskeletons and mimetic polyalloy, and even a prototype Time Displacement Device. This facility was destroyed in 2017. Personnel * Miles Dyson - Head researcher at Cyberdyne's Sunnyvale headquarters and the man primarily responsible for the creation of Skynet in the original timeline. After learning the truth about the dark future brought about by his creation, Dyson aided the Connors in destroying his lab and all his research. He was killed after being shot by police. In the Genisys timeline, Dyson is still alive and acts as a consultant to his son Daniel. * Carl Gibbons - Security guard at the front desk of the Sunnyvale headquarters. * Serena Kogan - Head of Project Angel and inventor of the original Hybrid. * Daniel Dyson - Son of Miles Dyson and head researcher at Cyberdyne in the Genisys timeline. He is the original creator of the Genisys computer app. * John Connor - Former leader of the Resistance before being converted into a T-3000 by Skynet. After his transformation, John was sent back in time to 2014 to secure Skynet's creation, becoming a high-level employee at Cyberdyne. He aided with the programming of Genisys, ensuring that it would become Skynet, and used his knowledge of future tech to advance Cyberdyne's robotics research. John was destroyed by the combined efforts of Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese and the Guardian who forced him into the prototype TDE and the magnetic field tore him apart. Category:Corporations Category:Terminator